Nonoha's Ring
by whatatravesty
Summary: The Orpheus Order is getting desperate to find someone who can beat Kaito with one of their special rings. Who will be next?
1. Chapter 1

Nonoha staggered into her room, pulled off her hair band, and collapsed onto her bed, too exhausted even to change clothes.

It's not like she had even done anything—she was useless, she knew she was, but that was the problem: she spent so much time watching the others solve puzzles, fighting the Orpheus Order, but she couldn't do anything herself. She forced herself to watch the puzzles, to take them in, to play through her memories, to look for something to contribute, but for all that she had perfect recall of the past, she could never see what was the right next move to make.

She had been helpless at the 5v5 match against the Orpheus Order; the Order had permitted Kaito to take an extra turn in place of Nonoha. Then, she had been useless when Erena's life had been on the line, and she was only saved by the miraculous timely arrival of Rook.

Nonoha wasn't exhausted from solving puzzles. She was exhausted from not solving them. She was emotionally exhausted. She was stressed. She knew that it was only a matter of time before their luck ran out and nobody would be able to cover for her, before her cluelessness got someone killed.

Sure, she could just leave the team, and leave her worries behind… but if someone got killed because she wasn't there, that would be even worse than if they had gotten killed because she had tried and failed. The Orpheus Order was out there, hurting people and taking over their minds, whether she liked it or not, and she had to do what she could to stop them. Not to mention that she was Kaito's emotional support, and she had to admit to herself, she needed him, too, and she didn't want to leave his side.

Maybe somebody else would have been content with that role. Should she?

She knew she really should talk to Kaito about this. She sat up and looked at her phone. She could call him, or just walk over to his room. But she needed to be strong for Kaito; she couldn't let her own problems distract him.

Suddenly her eyes caught on a package on her desk. _How did that get there? I guess I grabbed it this morning?_ It said something about how beaten she was that she didn't remember something like that.

She reached across the desk and pulled the package to her and ripped open the cardboard.


	2. Chapter 2

_Who'd call at this time of night? Please tell me this isn't another trap._

Kaito looked at his cellphone. It was only Nonoha. Phew. It would be comforting to hear her voice.

But why _would_ she be calling now?

"Nonoha." Kaito spoke into the phone.

"Kaito! You have to come to the school right now. There's an emergency?"

"What is it? Another challenge?"

"They've got another victim of their experimental rings."

"Shit. Who is it?"

"I'll explain when you get here, you have to hurry!" She hung up.

Okay…

Kaito was already hurrying, of course. He rushed to put his clothes on, and then he darted out the door and ran to school. _Why was Nonoha there already and not me?_

Kaito arrived at the school and saw a large square delineated on the ground.

Nonoha was on the other side. She was breathtakingly beautiful in the moonlight, her hair, which she wore down, blowing gently in the wind. Wait, why was her hair down, though? She almost never went out without her hair band. Something was off...

"Nonoha, what's going on?"

"I told you, Kaito. The Orpheus Order has another victim."

She held up her left hand.

 _An Orpheus ring._

Kaito was shocked, enraged. _Of course they would go for her, I shouldn't be shocked, they've shown there aren't any depths to which they wouldn't stoop, and they know she's the one person I care about more than anybody_ —

"We're going to do a puzzle together, Kaito."

"Freecell!" Kaito shouted. "Show your despicable face! You've crossed the line!"

"If you want her back, you'll have to defeat her, Kaito." The voice came from above. Kaito looked up and saw Freecell and rest of the Order standing on the roof of the school.

"Get down here!"

"Oh, no. I think we'll watch from here. This is between you and Nonoha."

"Where is everybody else?"

"Don't worry. They're fine." Nonoha spoke again. "They have no idea this is going on. Like Freecell said, this puzzle is between you and me. I'll show you I'm not the helpless girl you think I am." Her voice sounded the same as always, but her words— _This isn't Nonoha. It's the ring._

 _Isn't it?_

Nonoha pulled a controller from her pocket. She pressed a button, and the square of ground fell away, revealing a lava pit underneath their feet.

The fuck? How did they get _lava_ here?

Nonoha and Kaito now stood at opposite edges of a square. Cracks appeared, dividing the "playing field" into a 21 x 21 grid of cells. Some of the cells—about half—fell open like trap doors. A control platform rose in the center cell.

"Here's the deal, Kaito. Each turns lasts 15 seconds. At the end of each turn, the configuration is going to change. If you try to move at any other time, other than at the turn boundary, the cell will open up and you'll die. An announcer will announce the configurations in advance. It's a race to the center. Loser dies. Any questions?"

"Nonoha, you have to come to your senses—"

"No questions, then." She pressed another button.

A timer was projected onto the side of the school. It read 15 seconds and counted down. So this would let him know when the turn boundary was.

As Nonoha had claimed, a robotic voice began to speak.

" _The goal square in the center will be safe in every configuration, regardless of the instructions._ "

" _The next configuration will be a checkerboard, with the all corners safe."_

" _The next configuration will have every other north-south row safe, with the outer rows being safe."_

" _The next configuration will match the Ulam Spiral, with primes being safe squares. 2 is to the East."_

It spoke quickly, so that it could finish all its statements before one turn had passed, but Kaito was able to take it in. So the speaker would be giving configurations a few in advance, which would allow him to plot a path. It was likely to get more complex as it went on.

The turn changed, and Kaito jumped diagonally.

He looked at Nonoha. She had jumped two squares forward. _Of course. She can actually jump that far._ She saw him looking at her, and broke into a maniacal grin.

The speaker gave another configuration, and Kaito took it in.

"Nonoha! You—you—" _What? What do I say to her? How do I make her snap out of this?_ Nonoha was always so dependable, he didn't know how to deal with a rogue Nonoha…

"Kaito!" She yelled back in response. She didn't anything else; she was just teasing him, mocking him.

The game continued for a few turns. As expected, the descriptions got more convoluted, but they also got more sparse. This prevented both him and Nonoha from advancing very quickly, and Kaito's ability to plot paths seemed to even out against Nonoha's ability to jump farther.

After a few iterations, the announcer announced two configurations in one turn. Now it was _four_ ahead instead of just three, which meant Kaito had more to remember, but he could plan better. But this was starting to push against limits for what he could remember. Without supernatural help, anyway.

Nonoha looked unperturbed.

 _If I don't figure something out, one of us is going to die. I can't let that happen. We need to reach the center platform at the same time._

Or he could convince her to take off the ring, although that hadn't worked with anybody else.

But what could he say, other than plead?

Appeal to emotions?

"Nonoha, I'm your best friend! We don't want to kill each other! Remember all the time we've spent together, think about it!"

"Oh, I remember it! All that time where you just show off your puzzle skills to me, while you know I can't do them at all, then you insult my baking, then go hang out with Rook? Who tried to kill you? Is that what I have to do to get your attention? Try to kill you? Then so be it!"

The ring had gotten to her.

They slowly crawled towards the center. Then the game through another wrench.

" _The next configuration will be identical to the sixth configuration."_

The sixth configuration?! Shit, which one was that? Was it the parabola shape? No, that might have been the fifth… What was after that?

The configuration changed and Kaito jumped.

" _The next configuration will be a single game of life iteration applied to the twelfth configuration, where a safe square is 'live.'"_

Kaito had no idea what the twelfth configuration was.

The next two were similar—variations on older configurations that Kaito couldn't remember.

The puzzle was playing to Nonoha's strengths. But it wasn't just that. From watching her, Kaito could see her getting more confident, making better moves. She was just getting better at planning ahead and making strong moves. The ring was making her better.

Or was he being too uncharitable to her? For all that she couldn't do puzzles, the girl always had an admirable amount of raw brainpower… she just lacked training.

The turn flipped, and the next configuration was the first one Kaito had no idea about. The platform beneath his feet began to open up and he jumped to an adjacent one that was closing up. He would be able to survive this way, but he wouldn't be able to plan. Nonoha would get the edge easily.

What had Jikuhawa said? The ring breaks off when its wearer loses the will to fight. But would it be a good idea for that to happen? What if Nonoha fell unconscious?

There was only one thing to do. He reached deep inside himself, and pulled out the latent power that had been inside him since he lost the ring. He felt his glow. The memories were clearer now. It wasn't that he had really lost the memories before, they were just buried deep, and by thinking through his path he could reconstruct which order the configurations had been.

The path was clear now.

He would reach Nonoha. He would try to get her to take off the ring. If she did, he would be there to catch her, and if she didn't, well, he would follow her to the center and they would reach it together, tying.

The center continued to be sparse, making it difficult to close in on the center. But it would only be a matter of time.

Still, it would be easy to predict what Nonoha would do, if she was just trying to optimize her own path forward, and Kaito could meet her there.

"Nonoha," Kaito said as he reached the square adjacent to her, a few turns later.

"You think just because you've gotten close to me means that you'll be able to tie me, don't you?"

"Nonoha. Face it, you'll never be as good as me." It felt awful to say, like he was trampling over their sacred friendship. "You're skating by on your physical skills. You'll never be able to do puzzles."

"You're so transparent. I know you're just trying to goad me into giving up. But it's not going to work, Kaito!"

The configuration switched again, and they both jumped. Each of them now one square closer.

"I'm never going to give up! I won't let them—the—" She momentarily seemed disoriented, and she blinked, and then it was gone. "I won't let you win, Kaito! I'm going to beat you at puzzles!"

Of course. Nonoha had a will of steel. That never would have worked. This was bad.

Even if they both got out of this, would they be able to get the ring off of Nonoha?

A question for later. For now, he had to deal with getting to the center with her.

Then the next announcement came.

" _The next configuration will be the tile pattern on the roof of classroom 4703b. Same orientation, black tiles are safe."_

What the fuck?

Kaito had no idea what the tile pattern of that classroom was. His powers—whatever you call them—had no idea, either. He had been in that classroom, but the ceiling pattern had _never_ been stored in his brain. Not even his powers could magic the information out of nowhere.

" _The next configuration will be the tile pattern on the ground at the center of the park downtown. Same orientation, black tiles are safe."_

Shit.

The future path was falling apart in his mind's eye. Nonoha had a wild grin, a look of triumph on her face.

She was almost there. She would probably be there in less than four turns.

And Kaito didn't see a way.

"Well, well, it sure is funny how this turned out, isn't it?" Freecell was speaking now, still watching from the roof of the school. "We didn't consider this girl for a long time, we tried putting a ring on a _dog_ of all things before we tried Nonoha, but in the end this useless girl ended up being your undoing, Kaito." Freecell laughed maniacally.

"HOW DARE YOU?" Kaito roared. The configuration flipped and both players jumped. The speaker began to give another description, again impossibly unknowable. "How dare you talk about Nonoha like that? She's the least useless person I know! She's always been there for me, for all of us! You're despicable for using her like this!"

Nonoha looked at Kaito again. She seemed to relax a bit, but then the configuration flipped again. Kaito jumped, no idea where he was going, while Nonoha moved with purpose.

She would be there on the next turn. There was no way Kaito could reach it.

"Nonoha, please! You have to come to your senses!" _The puzzle wants to be solved, think, the puzzle wants to be solved…_

But Kaito had nothing.

Nonoha jumped to the center.

She stood, staring down Kaito, triumphant, illuminated by the orange light of the molten lava below. She reached for a button the platform's controller.

"Nonoha, you can't let them win!"

"Oh no, I'm the one who has won, Kaito. For the first time of my life, I've beaten you at a puzzle." Another change, but Kaito's platform didn't move, and he jumped a square closer. Maybe he could get there... "I did it without relying on you or anybody to bail me out, I did it without relying—" Suddenly she flinched, and then look confused, and then collapsed to her knees. "I did i—no, I used the ring, I didn't, I didn't really, I—"

What was going on?

"I did let them win. I let the—Order win. I just—wanted—didn't want them to win—I wanted to solve puzzles so we could beat them, not—"

 _Come on, lose the will to fight, admit defeat, please…_

Suddenly, the light came on in her eyes again and she stood up. "No! I'll never be defeated! You despicable fuckers can go to hell! And I don't need your fucking ring!"

And the ring shattered, and Nonoha fell again.

She collapsed all the way to the ground this time, clearly unconscious. Her head dangled off the edge of the center platform, but she was in no danger of falling off.

Kaito slowly improvised his way to the center over the next few turns. He pressed the button on the platform and the game came to an end.


	3. Chapter 3

Nonoha was disoriented. Her head was fuzzy, the air was fuzzy, her memories of the past indefinite amount of time were fuzzy. It was a strange feeling, to have fuzzy memories.

Nonoha realized that she laying in her bed. Someone was with her, sitting by her, their hand resting on her back. Kaito.

Nonoha sat up and the room came into focus. "Kaito—what—" Suddenly, it all came rushing back, the ring, the puzzle, everything. "Kaito! I—I—" She began sobbing. "I almost killed you! Didn't I—I did—"

"Nonoha, it's okay." Kaito wrapped his arms around her and pulled her towards him. "It wasn't you, it was the ring."

"It was me! I put it on, I _chose_ to do that—"

"It was the Orpheus order."

"No! I could have—could have—refused, but I didn't—I chose to put it on." Nonoha wiped one of her tears and attempted to compose herself. "The last thing I thought before I put it on was that I'd be able to solve puzzles, it was selfish, I just wanted to be able to solve puzzles and I put it on and I endangered _both of us_."

"You… want to solve puzzles?" He asked with a tone of voice as if it was the craziest thing in the world.

"Of course I want to solve puzzles!" She pushed herself away. "Moron! Why do you think I hang out with you?"

"Nonoha, you're just feeling the after-effects of the ring—"

"No! Kaito, don't dismiss me like that! I want to talk about this. Please. It almost got one of us killed." Kaito looked confused, but he was listening. "I've always felt like this. I _remember_ always feeling like this. Do you think the Orpheus ring would have worked if I didn't want to solve puzzles at all?"

"I thought… I thought you just liked watching me solve puzzles."

"What? That's stupid! Who would want to just _watch_ someone solve puzzles?"

( _But it's not like I've done anything my entire life to suggest otherwise,_ Nonoha thought to herself.)

"It's what you said!"

"What? When?"

"Remember? When we were kids, and I told you that you would need to solve puzzles by yourself, and you ate so much you got sick, and then you told me you didn't want to be by yourself, you just wanted to watch—"

"I was a kid! I don't know what I was thinking, but I didn't mean that! I wanted—I just wanted—I wanted to solve puzzles _with you_ , Kaito, that's all I wanted. Just be with you and solve puzzles."

"Oh."

They sat in silence for a while. Nonoha felt embarrassed, as if we she had just confessed… well, she _had_ confessed _something_ , but she felt like she had confessed _that_.

Finally, Kaito broke the awkward silence. "Well, let's do a puzzle together, then." His face lit up with the usual boyish smile he wore whenever he thought about puzzles. "Right now." He reached into his backpack on the floor and pulled out a standard 3x3x3 Rubik's cube.

"Kaito, I couldn't even do that smaller one you gave me when we were kids."

"We'll solve it together. Now close your eyes while I mix it up, or you'll just reverse what I did."

"Okay." Nonoha closed her eyes while Kaito spun the faces of the Rubik's cube. "Done." Nonoha opened her eyes to see a jumbled cube. Kaito spun it around so she could see the whole thing.

"Okay, now I'm going to give you a hint." He made a sequence of moves on the cube, then handed the cube to Nonoha.

"Uh—what—"

"Do you see what I just showed you?"

Nonoha thought about the moves Kaito had made. She could see them clearly in her head. She could see the cube that Kaito had originally unveiled as if it were right next to the one she was looking at now. There was something about them… they were almost the same. Only three pieces were different. Three corner pieces had swapped places.

Oh. If Nonoha could swap 3 corner pieces, she could get _all_ the corner pieces in the right place, relative to the center tiles. She just had to apply that same sequence of moves a bunch of times in the right places, getting one piece into place at a time.

Right face counter-clockwise.

Bottom face counter-clockwise.

Right face clockwise.

Top face clockwise.

Right face counter-clockwise.

Bottom face clockwise.

Right face clockwise.

Top face clockwise.

Right face counter-clockwise.

Bottom face counter-clockwise.

Right face clockwise.

Top face 180 degrees.

Right face counter-clockwise.

Bottom face clockwise.

Right face clockwise.

This rotated three of the corners on the top face. She did this many times, in various orientations until all eight corners were in the right position.

Almost.

When she was done, two corners were still in the wrong place and they needed to be exchanged with each other. But her procedure only let her swap three at a time. She couldn't move one of these two without moving a third as well, and undoing her progress.

So clearly, this was a case where she would just have to backtrack, mess some of her work up and then put it all back together later, but she couldn't see a way to do it, no way to combine a set of these 3-swap operations to swap just two.

She was about to ask for Kaito's help again, but then she saw it. She simply rotated one face, the face that had the two swapped corners. Suddenly, there were three swapped corners. Then she applied Kaito's sequence again to rotate them, and now all the corners were in the right place.

"Kaito, I did—I did something!"

The corners still weren't right. They occupied the correct physical space, but they didn't have the right orientation. When Kaito solved a Rubik's cube, he always solved one entire face first, then made his way to the other side of the cube. This wasn't progress in the same way. Still, it was something.

"Good job! Here." He held out his hand for the cube, and Nonoha passed it back. Kaito did another sequence of moves and handed it back to Nonoha. A different pattern this time, with a different consequence.

Right face counter-clockwise.

Bottom face counter-clockwise.

Right face clockwise.

Bottom face 180 degrees.

Front face clockwise.

Bottom face counter-clockwise.

Front face counter-clockwise.

Top face clockwise.

Front face clockwise.

Bottom face clockwise.

Front face counter-clockwise.

Bottom face 180 degrees.

Right face counter-clockwise.

Bottom face clockwise.

Right face clockwise.

Top face counter-clockwise.

This one kept all the pieces in the same place, but rotated two of the corners, one clockwise and another counter-clockwise. Nonoha used this to get all the corners turned the right away. She didn't get stuck at the end this time, with just one one corner turned wrong—which was good, because she couldn't have used the same trick this time.

Now all the corners were in the right spot _and_ rotated correctly. Now each face of the cube displayed an X. Only the edge pieces needed fixing, now.

Kaito smiled. "Great!" He held out his hand, as if to take the cube. Nonoha started to hand it to him, but then she paused. "Wait. Let me think for a second."

After executing the sequences so many times, she began to get a feel for how they worked.

For example, the sequence that rotated two corners worked as follows. First, she executed a long sequence of steps which rotated one corner piece in the top face, while completely messing up much of the rest of the cube—but leaving the top face completely intact, other than the one rotated piece. Then she rotated the entire top face. Now a different corner was in the same place as that corner she had rotated. Then, she executed the long sequence of steps _in reverse_. This rotated this other corner piece in the opposite direction, while repairing the rest of the cube that got jumbled. Then she rotated the top face back. The result was that these two corners had rotated and nothing else had moved.

The procedure to swap three corner pieces worked by a similar principle.

But one she saw this, she saw—

 _The procedure could be applied to the edge pieces as well!_

Excited, Nonoha swapped all the edge pieces into place and then flipped them.

She again didn't run into any problems, needing to swap just two edge pieces, or needing to flip just one.

A completed cube sat in her hands.

"Kaito! I did it! Kaito! Look!"

"Congratulations!" He looked so happy. It wasn't the usual way he looked at her. He usually looked at her with care, with affection, but never the abundant _joy_ he was showing now. Nonoha didn't think she had seen him look at her like that since… she had solved the wooden blocks puzzle when they were kids.

 _She_ hadn't felt that way since then, either.

Nonoha wrapped her arms around Kaito. "I get it! You didn't show me the quick tricks, you showed me those long, methodical sequences so I could infer the pattern and make my own!"

"That's right. I can show you the quick tricks later."

Nonoha smiled. "I'd like that. You're a great teacher, Kaito."

"Nonoha, from now on, I want to solve all the puzzles with you."

"Me too, Kaito."


	4. Chapter 4

They sat, wordlessly, in each other arms for what felt like an endless amount of time.

Eventually, Nonoha suddenly sat up. "Oh my god, I need my hairband, my hair is all, like—"

"I think your hair is beautiful." He moved his arm a few inches, as if he had moved to stroke it ( _wishful thinking?_ ) and then had second thoughts.

"Beautiful—I—Kaito, don't you think it's pretty when my hair is up?" Nonoha tried to look indignant, but not _too_ indignant, so it would be clear that she was trying to tease.

From the way Kaito's face reddened, she wasn't sure she hit the mark.

"It's—no, see, it's a different type of beauty, like when your hair is up, you look very _neat_ , which is great, it's like a solved puzzle is pleasing, but when your hair is down, you have this other kind of beauty, a wild beauty, an _allure_ , like a messy puzzle waiting to be solved—"

"You think _I'm_ a puzzle?"

He leaned away. "No, I mean, I think you're a _person_ , Nonoha, don't ever doubt that I think you're a person, I just—"

But Nonoha just burst out laughing. "Kaito, I'm just teasing."

He breathed a sigh of relief.

"You really find me… alluring?" Nonoha did her best to sound seductive.

"I—"

Nonoha leaned forward and put her arms around Kaito again, and put her face close enough that their noses were nearly touching. Kaito took the cue and kissed her.

Nonoha accepted the kiss and made out with Kaito with all the fiery passion she could muster. Their lips locked for what felt like an eternity. Finally, Kaito seemed to find the bravery to do what Nonoha had been waiting for and began to unbutton Nonoha's shirt. Nonoha moved to pull off Kaito's own shirt, and he obliged by lifting his arms. Nonoha admired Kaito's well-muscled chest while he admired Nonoha's sexy figure.

She pressed her lips to Kaito's again, feeling his skin, while he reached around to unclasp her bra, his hands fumbling with the strap for an embarrassingly long minute.

"Kaito," Nonoha said, leaning back. "I think we found a puzzle you can't solve."


End file.
